Elite-bikes.co.uk, A New Online Store!

[thewoomaster]

WoW give the dude a break his just starting out! Tarty started some where fair enough along time ago now etc.., but as long as his service, parts and postage are good his has a better shot than Dan ko lol no?

Good luck with it all Dude.

[Mark W]

Tarty got it all right (Pretty much) before they started trying to have people spend money with them.

[TheCircus]

What a surprise, the Senior Members ganging up on anybody trying to snatch a chunk of Tartybikes' monopoly. Nepotism or what?

[Mark W]

Are you going to do a Loose Change style expose?

[JT!]

There's nothing worse than a shop that brings it's website out before it's ready. It's a total mess and you've pretty much lost the respect of the members of trials-forum (a big chunk of the UK market) by what you've said on here, and the way you've said it.

You can't mess about when opening a store that'll sell trials products in this day and age. 4 years ago you could have gotten away with it, but with the opening of tartybikes and selectbikes you have massive competition (which has shown with the recent closure of 2 trials shops) you're going to struggle with a good reputation, let alone the one you have now.

[Joe@Onza]

We only stock certain trials products which will not show up on the website just yet such as Tensile and Onza etc, but we know that many of you trialers (like ourselves) ride other bikes such as BMX etc.

Thankyou for your time, if you have any queries or would like any more info please call 07717508427 or 07595690666. Feel free to reply to the topic with what you like! helpful comments appreciated.

Rob

EliteBikes

Hi Rob,

Best of luck with your business, I fully applaud people who have the bravery to open their own business's. Slightly concerned though that you have mentioned us. I'm in charge of the UK distribution of Onza and Tensile through Moore Large and cant find any trace of you actually ordering any stock from us. Also some of the price's do not make sense either. Tip: There have been some some on-line shops recently getting a hell of a lot of stick for claiming to have stock when they don't. Onza black Shindig pedals have been out of stock in the UK for 6-7 months and are not on order either, So if someone buys them you are going to struggle.

Edited March 12, 2009 by Joe@Onza

[echo_rob]

ok, right, all of the comments that have been expressed on this forum are very valid, even the critical ones. We are trying to show the members of trials-forum that we can take on board criticism. We are sorry that our previous thread replies depicted us as unprofessional and building a bad reputation for ourselves.

Let us be honest though, can you purchase items from the site? yes.

We are sorry if we have offended anyone and are only trying to make an honest living, what's wrong with that? Surely you can see that we are no idiots, and really have tried our best to publish the site.

If people have read this thread and think that we will not offer a great service and competitive prices, you are wrong.

We are fully online and if anyone has any questions please call us on 07717508427.

And Joe@Onza, we have made fairly considerable orders from Onza.

Thankyou

Rob

EliteBikes

Edited March 12, 2009 by echo_rob

[Joe@Onza]

if you have then accept my apologies, Its just that I've just rang Moore Large and they have no records. My point was just a genuine heads up that people get very arsey if you display something that you have not or can not get hold of.

cheers

[Mike Poyzer @ Onza]

Having looked at the site and not wishing to be involved in the pros and cons of your operation, I would point out that there does not seem to be an address on it from which you operate. This is a LEGAL REQUIREMENT of any website through which you are distance selling to consumers.

[Muel]

You are a proper registered business right?

Look at it from our point of view. You asking customers to buy stuff from a website thats a 3 year old template that looks rushed, you only have a mobile number, the distributors don't have a record of selling you stuff, all the information is copied off other peoples sites...

No offence but from where I'm sitting it could easily be a scam. That's just how it seems, it's probably nothing of the sort, just my thoughts.

Edited March 12, 2009 by Muel

[BenLeacock™]

Are you the guy my age that ages ago told me about this? I think you should start clean plan what you want to do, ask on the forum for advice and then get help from web designers/designers. After all this is aimed at the cycling community. Look at onza for example, made a website for the first time, messed it up, and got advice and now a winner!

I doubted this since you told me, this hasn't changed my mind sorry...

[JD™]

Hello there,

My name is Rob Margetts, and alongside my esteemed associate Cal Fairey, we form EliteBikes LTD.

Sorry Rob, I followed this thread and didn't want to rip in, but following Mike@Onzas comment I looked at your original statement above. Then I went over to the Companies House website, which holds records of all businesses held as limited liability companies and EliteBikes is not one of them... You cannot advertise yourself as a company if you aren't one.

I won't say anything about the site and your manner on here so far - it's all been said before. What I can say is that I, as a consumer, would never buy from a business which has presented itself so badly.

[JonMack]

Although it's been said before, I have to also agree that I feel you're dealing with the criticism the wrong way, you're biting back whereas you should be thanking people. No one likes to hear that their work is shit, I know how that feels, after spending the last 7 or 8 years trying to get to grips with learning and developing my graphic design skills, which eventually led to me gaining a degree, it still hurts when people say they dislike my work, but instead of kicking off at them, which a few years ago I would have done, I accept the criticism, and try to address their concerns. You and your mate may think it's an awesome site, but you're not your client base, we are, and if we turn around and say we think it's shit, then you should learn from that and rectify it. I would have thought you took massive amounts of inspiration from TartyBikes for how highly recommended they are, and also from Trials-UK for how often they are slated, the last thing you want to do is end up in that position, with a warehouse full of stock which no one will buy except your mates because you've lied about having parts in stock which you don't, or you've promised people next day delivery and a week later it still hasn't arrived.

It might sound stupid, but before you built your site, did you do any research into things like this

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/galleries/ecommerce-websites/

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/galleries/i...onal-ecommerce/

These are both blog posts which are purely about inspiration e-commerce sites. If you spent a few hours looking through those, then compared it to yours, you would see where you've fallen down. At the end of the day, you're trying to start a business, so do it properly. As Mr. Harrison so rightly said, you shouldn't have to "re-coup" your web development costs through the sale of stock, I'm sure TartyBikes have spent a fair few ££££ with Cox Design to get their site looking exactly how they want it to, because they realised they're not talented web developers, so they didn't try to do it themselves. Bearing in mind I'm a web designer (I'm no Eric Mayer when it comes to CSS, and I'm no Pentagram when it comes to design, but I know what I'm doing), I know just how hard it is to design a site like some of those on those blogs I linked to, and if people asked me to design something like that, and I honestly didn't think I could do it, I wouldn't accept the job, there is no shame in admitting defeat, you can't be a jack of all trades, it's just not going to happen.

A few things I feel you should take into account, as a potential customer and as a freelance graphic and web designer are the following:

Design/content:

Don't use a template. I make my life slightly easier by using a barebones grid based CSS template for designing my clients sites, but it literally is barebones, no images, just basic text styling, line height, and well structured layouts, this saves me from having to code the backend for hours to setup a basic layout, all I have to do is design how I want it to look, play with the CSS to finalise my changed, and tada, it's done. However, this can take hours, days, weeks, even months, to get it looking spot on, and I would never, ever launch a site if it wasn't ready. Seems you've gone "that's kinda done, let's get it out there", which is the wrong attitude to take, it should be 100% done, sorted, and perfect before it's launched. I understand that there is no way you would wait until you have all your stock before launching your site, day to day Tarty still adds stock to their site as and when they get it in, but they didn't launch the site with stock from one distributor on it.

The logo needs to go, using a free downloadable font from dafont is perfectly acceptable, but only when it's done well. Anyone could download Birth Of A Hero, type that out, and boom, they have it done. I'm not sure what font the guys at Tarty use, I know they used Base02 on their stickers for a while, but at least with their logo, they've personalised it, made it their own, with the simple addition of a stroke. I'm not saying add stroke to your logo and it will be perfect, and I understand the whole grunge thing is cool and you wanna be down with the kids, but it looks awful. There's tasteful grunge, and then there's your logo. Here are just a few bookmarks I picked out of my collection which might help you,

http://justcreativedesign.com/2008/12/02/l...sign-resources/

http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/inspiration/...gn-trends-2009/

http://www.fuelyourcreativity.com/50-kick-...or-inspiration/

http://www.smashingapps.com/2008/11/13/33-...nspiration.html

What you also have to understand is that re-branding is an ongoing process. You can't design your site/logo once, and stick with it forever, trends change, the web updates, and you need to stick with it. If you wanna be in top shape, you gotta be ontop of those trends, you don't have to set them, and sure you don't have to follow them either, but you can't go using a template from 2006, that whole dark dreary thing isn't cool anymore unless it's pulled off really well, and yours just isnt.

Your top menu needs MAJOR work, Home and Web Store is no good, your homepage should be your store, you shouldn't have to click into it, just look at Tarty, as soon as you go on it, you have your categories, easily accessible, you have your latest products, the sale products, and the latest news. It's not my idea of a gorgeous site by any means, but it's a good looking functional site. Yours just screams amateur to me. It needs structure, the top bar really should only have major links such as Home, About, Team, Media, Contact, etc. and these pages should always be accessible, however the web store should also always be on show, utilise a three column layout if you need to, cats on the left, content in the middle, special offers on the right, for example, but you're an online store first, and a website second, not a website first with an online store tacked onto the side. If people can't see a decent amount of product or at least visible links to product as soon as they get on the site, how are they gonna know you're a store. To me the homepage says "Welcome to mine and my mates website, check it out we've got an online store too". That's all wrong. Product product product, notice on Tarty the first thing you see are all the products, the news is underneath.

As soon as I click web store, I'm all over the place. I get random products, from crank bolts to inner tubes and brake pads, just thrown in my face, I saw you stocked KHE pegs, so I wanted to check out the price, but because I was scanning the categories looking for "Pegs" I couldn't see it, I actually had to slow down and read every single category separately, because they're under Axle Pegs. Now that wouldn't be a problem if there was some kinda structure to the categories, but they seem to just be thrown in willy nilly, You need to be more structured with your categories, don't just throw everything into the barrel, because people won't find it, split them up, for example, on Pijin, you get

Bags

Bars

Bar Ends

Bottom Brackets

Brakes

Chains

Chain Tensioners

Clothing

Cranks

DVDs

Forks

Frames

This makes sense, they don't really offer much of a sub category system, but if we go to tarty, we see a similar structure, yet when we click "Frames" we get plenty of options

20" Frames

24" Frames

26" Frames, 116mm

26" Frames, 135mm

You could do the exact same thing, Frames> BMX, Trials, etc. and within them, have sub categories too. What's going to be hard is deciding how to do that, as you've set yourself up as a kinda one stop shop for everything, so if I want a stock frame, would I go Frames > Trials, or would I go Frames > MTB? Then does it go Frames > MTB > Trials, and if so, where do I go for a mod frame, because it's certainly not a MTB frame. You need really careful planning with things like this. It would benefit you to have Categories, then sub cats, then sub sub cats, so we go BMX > Frames > Street, or we go Trials > Frames > Stock, or we go Dirt > Tyres, or DH > Forks. It needs to be well structured, and very well planned. Obviously there are going to be parts that can go in multiple categories, so it's not going to be easy. I really don't know the best way to do it, it could get very complicated, or it could be very simple, but either way, something needs to be done about it, you can't just throw everything into one paragraph and expect people to find their way through it. People have very short attention spans, there are statistics around, but I can't be f**ked to find them, but yeah, people are gonna click off your site in a few seconds if they can't find what they want straight away.

I could keep going for ages, but it's 12.15 and I have to be up in 8 hours and would like a decent nights sleep, so I'm going to leave it for now, I just hope I've given you something to think about. I'm not trying to be a fanny, I'm trying to help, from a design and a customer POV.

Shameless plug but if you do need some professional quality work done for a fairly decent price, feel free to give me an email, there's a link to my website in my sig, check it out if you get a chance, I'm not out to rip anyone off, I'm just out to try and get my foot in the freelance design world, and get a bit of work for my portfolio.

Peace.

[Dan S]

Oh god.what a mess. can't find anything in that store

[JD™]

Shameless plug but if you do need some professional quality work done for a fairly decent price, feel free to give me an email, there's a link to my website in my sig, check it out if you get a chance, I'm not out to rip anyone off, I'm just out to try and get my foot in the freelance design world, and get a bit of work for my portfolio.

Peace.

Do this, Jons work is good quality and will definitely get you off to a better start.

My personal opinion would be to take that site down, really concentrate on what image you want to put across and what demographics you really want to appeal to and then work with Jon to create something solid that won't have the shit ripped out of it again. Then it'll be time for a massive relaunch, everyone will applaud and "this time next year, we'll be millionaires". Obviously not that simple, but having a solid base to launch off of will do you no end of good.

There are a few business owners on here, and I'm in the process of setting mine up at the moment so I know what it feels like to get that early criticism, which is why I'm making sure to show my works in progress to people I trust to give me their honest opinion as I go along. It's taken me 6 months so far to get a good business plan down and start to write the site and general branding material and I expect it to be about 6 more before I can happily launch it to the world. Honestly boys, it's worth doing it right.

[manuel]

Surely you can see that we are no idiots

I would have to go with no right now ? especially if the LTD part of your name is fiction.

and really have tried our best to publish the site.

Sometimes (in life) the best you can do is not good enough.

[Mikey Tomo]

You have a landline number at the top of the page but it isn't working?

[JonMack]

I sure hope I didn't write all that for nothing.

[GlynnP]

Just read all of Jons post ( dam you like to write Jon ).

You should take on everything he said its all coming from a great source and he is seriously trying to help you out there

Before I get the pull your head out of Jons ass comment I also come from a ND Digital Graphics and Interactive Media and now studying BA Interactive Media Production and from years of research I can tell you even though i would love not to that customers are just going to see the first page of your site and they will turn and leave.

This is a bad example from image i found very quickly but which of this shops would you go into

Dispite if you like the second one or not it is alot better than the first.

Your website's success based on the first impression of the site no matter how much marketing you do.

I hope you take on everything that people on here has said and if you want to take my advice take your website offline and bring it back when it fully works and is up to standards to take on the market leaders.

[JonMack]

Just read all of Jons post ( dam you like to write Jon ).

You should take on everything he said its all coming from a great source and he is seriously trying to help you out there

I'm passionate :$ and thank you very much for the compliment man

[GlynnP]

Well mate i couldnt let that post go to waste so thought i would get my head wedged right in your ass

[aener]

Well mate i couldnt let that post go to waste so thought i would get my head wedged right in your ass

Very well said. I enjoyed that.

[eskimo]

I sure hope I didn't write all that for nothing.

I know the feeling,